RSA Conference 2009 Trends-Day 1

I can easily sum up what nearly every talk, every keynote, and every booth vendor is discussing here at RSA.  I just need four words: “Cloud computing and virtualization”. Virtualization is important because of the desire to make things cheaper and easier to maintain, and presents a powerful argument for power savings especially the week of earth day. The security concerns in virtualization are generally no different than they are with any current system, except for attack vectors between the host and guest operating systems. Virtualizing security services may be helpful in long term cost savings, but introduces additional risks which must be considered and mitigated or accepted.

During the Cryptographer’s Panel, counterarguments about cloud computing were presented. Whit Diffie said he was excited, while Ron Rivest expressed concern. Bruce Schneier said the current move toward cloud computing is like the computing industry coming full circle. Back in the 70s and 80s, we had underpowered terminals accessing shared computing power, storage, and services on a mainframe. Now, replace mainframe with “cloud” and underpowered terminal with “netbook” or “mobile phone” and you’ll see where we are.

Personally, I don’t think we did a great job of information security in the 70s and 80s, so coming full circle is not a good thing.  Cloud computing must be an area of continued vigilance, concern, and research for the coming years.

What are your thoughts? Tell us in the comments!